Microsoft Gets Busy
By Bill Pitzer
Many believe XML is the end-all glorious
solution for every problem with B2B data interchange. Several bodies have emerged with the aim of developing best practices and standards for XML. Microsoft is no different.
Thanks to a repository of XML schema at www.biztalk.org, Microsoft's BizTalk Framework initiative has begun to gain some momentum among more recent adopters of the technology. This loosely coupled virtual community of "standards users" has created a set of guidelines for XML schema and messaging methods to form the BizTalk Framework. With this collaborative effort, they hope to drive the rapid adoption of XML by defining a standard framework for XML-based integration over the Internet. Though the early efforts seemed disjointed—without much backing or community involvement—I now believe that this entire endeavor may have been an idea ahead of its time.
Currently offered as a free download, BizTalk Server 2000 is available for preview. This broad suite of tools lets organizations create distributed business processes based on the BizTalk framework.By taking over the data interchange process, BizTalk Server can now link to XML documents inside and outside your organization, translate non-XML documents, and automate different data-processing tasks.
Anyone Can Use It
The simple XML document hierarchy is pretty easy to understand, even for those with only minimal experience with the syntax.
